[SPEAKER_06]: My buddy Dylan Zahn uses similar bags for his congas.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's an old school technique of Army, Navy duffel bags.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's a lot cheaper than proper cases. Proper cases. Hey, why don't you make it hot? Give me the case here and I'll take it to the gear dump. Oh, I got it.
[Cotter]: I don't like to call it intermission because it puts the wrong idea in people's heads. But, you know, we do a little break.
[SPEAKER_03]: And keep everybody in the house.
[SPEAKER_00]: We stream to YouTube, and then we do broadcasts on local programs.
[Cotter]: No, he does it all.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's coming in.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I'm a big star. It's my soda.
[SPEAKER_06]: Drink a break.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right, so I need it.
[Sundaram]: It's a big one.
[SPEAKER_08]: I'm working.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got it. I didn't see it.
[Cotter]: Check, check. Too loud? OK.
[Sundaram]: Hello? Check, check, check, check, check, check, check.
[Cotter]: Good? OK. All right. Very good. Good evening, friends and neighbors. My name is Terry E. Cotter, and I direct elder services at our beloved West Medford Community Center. Welcome to another evening of Fresh Fridays, Words and Music, our third of this program year. We are up and running with our rebrand and happy to be bringing you this noteworthy program of community conversation and great musical entertainment. Thanks to a generous grant from the Medford Arts Council, a member of the Massachusetts Cultural Council, we are on the move at 111 Arlington Street. So I want to remind you that COVID and RSV and the flu are real, and we are still trying to be mindful of local health requirements and concerns. So masking is welcomed, but not required. We're just really happy to be sponsoring live programming here at the WMCC and glad to see our neighbors, friends, and supporters coming in from the cold. and through those doors. So thank you very much for being here tonight. Thanks also to Kevin Harrington and Mark Davidson from Medford Community Media for guiding us as we broadcast you via Medford Community Media, channels 3 for Comcast and 47 for Verizon. If you're out there watching on your electronic devices or your television, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, welcome to the show. So, as many of you know, for the past two years ago, I had the honor of serving as Medford's inaugural Poet Laureate. Acting as the official city poet, my task was to highlight poets and poetry and literature, particularly working with community members who may traditionally have less access to poetry. working with the city's administration and Medford Arts Council, I believe I was able to increase this access to diverse local communities across various platforms. Needless to say, it was a new and unique opportunity for me to expand the city's recognition of and appreciation for poetry as an art form worthy of celebrating. Well, my tenure as the city's first poet in chief ended on June 30th in 2023. I had the pleasure of officially passing the baton to Medford's second ever Poet Laureate. Now, as she approaches the last quarter of her own appointment, let me reintroduce her to this community and to the greater city. Vijaya Sundaram is a native of northern India, who has been a resident... Southern India, I got it wrong twice. Okay, who has been a resident of Medford for close to 20 years. Okay, more than 20 years. Okay, Vijaya lives in Medford's other west, we call it, Felsway West. She is a truly creative spirit. She's an accomplished poet and a literary lioness. I'd love to hear a growl. Okay. She's also a songwriter, a singer, and an assistant professor in the English and Humanities Department at Bunker Hill Community College. She is in the middle of the end of the semester craziness, grading papers and all of that stuff. So we're not going to be able to keep her forever, but she's here right now. She has also been a traditional and homeschooling elementary grades teacher, as well as a poetry and literature professor. Her written work has appeared in publications like the Rising Phoenix Press and the Stardust Review, and in late 2023, her first full collection of poetry, Fractured Lens, let us show it to you, was released by Somerville's Sylvania Bava Press. It has received great acclaim and is a cherished volume in my own poetry collection. And if you want to have it for your poetry collection, Vijay has some copies over there that you can purchase. Now, I've known Vijaya for close to four years now, and we've worked together on a few occasions, and I've been blessed by her association and her allyship. She is a poet of great power and clarity. There is substance and rhythm and style and nuance and depth to her writing. She is a progressive thinker and understands social justice, prejudice, and systemic inequity from both a personal and an intellectual perspective. I believe that we are kindred spirits. It's my honor and my pleasure to bring back my good friend and poetry peer Vijaya Sundaram to Fresh Fridays at the West Medford Community Center. Please give her a little bit of love. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to forego my usual custom of reading a poem to open these monthly proceedings, but we will both be sharing several pieces as part of our conversation. With that in mind, let's have a friendly chat with my friend Vijaya Sundaram. So Vijaya, I'm going to start out like this. As Medford's second ever Poet Laureate, how goes it?
[Sundaram]: It's pretty hectic. I have enjoyed it. But it's not one of those things where you can sit back and relax and say, oh, now I've got it. I can't do anything. I have been asked to read at various events. And because I am who I am, I don't like to repeat myself. So I write the poem for the event while trying to stay true, not trying to, I stay true to my vision and my but include the thing that they're asking about in such a way that it works aesthetically for me, as well as intellectually for me. So I've been asked to read at various things, including the inauguration of our current mayor, Pride Festival, Haiti Flag Day, the CPAs, they had an event in the beginning where they celebrated what they'd achieved. the gala at the arts collaborative Medford, so a whole lot of things, which meant that I had to write for all of those things, and I really enjoyed doing it. It brought me great satisfaction, and I worked pretty hard on it. So yeah, it's been a lot of work, but apart from that, I've also started a poetry club at the Medford Public Library, because I take this mandate seriously. If I'm to be poet laureate, I'm gonna try and bring it to the people of Medford. I just decided to do that as a sort of my gesture towards our city. And I recently began an open mic at the Arts Collaborative Medford. It's a beautiful, beautiful spot. It really is. So I call it open mic for poetry and original songs. It's not for bands to play, but if you're a duo or a trio, you can play. Duo is better than trio because it becomes too big. And yesterday we had our third open mic, and it's once a month. And we had a really nice crowd. I mean, I was surprised. It was like 20, 21 people.
[Cotter]: I got to get over there. I really do. I will get you there. I'm going to get you there.
[Sundaram]: So that's part of what's been going on.
[Cotter]: You've been very busy, in fact. I mean, I've been trying to keep track of all the different things that you are doing. In fact, I wasn't sure that you'd be able to make time for this program. But your work really does speak for itself. And I want to ask you, what's been, I mean, if you're able to say, what's been the best part of your tenure so far?
[Sundaram]: I think getting to know people like you. Poets, as a poet, I was a pretty solitary kind of writer. I did not mingle with other poets. Poets are generally solitary creatures. We labor and toil in the dark, so to speak, and we write for ourselves, and we hope that somebody will find us. We're kind of diffident creatures, even though we might be outgoing in other ways. We're kind of like, oh, am I good enough? Who likes me? But then I found all other, I mean you brought me into the scene. And I discovered Julia Lizella through you and Max Heineck. And then I met other poets who've invited me to speak at various events. So I spoke at Arlington Public Library. Yeah, Gene Flanagan's over in Arlington.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, Gene Flanagan.
[Sundaram]: And then in Newton, Newton Free Library and also at the district, Somerville District Court. I got a nice card from the justice over there who heard me read a poem about diversity. I was like.
[Cotter]: That's hilarious, you know, because the last thing that I really want to get is mail from the court.
[Sundaram]: Yes, right. I was like, whoa, maybe if I get a speeding ticket, I'll go there.
[Cotter]: They could take care of it for you. What has surprised you most about the work that you've been doing in your capacity as poet laureate?
[Sundaram]: I didn't know it would be this much work. I just thought you become a laureate and then you read at a few events. There have been a lot of events. I even read the Martin Luther King. I forgot to include that.
[Cotter]: I loved that one, thank you. Well, we're doing Martin Luther King again this year, so we'll have to maybe chat a bit about that. So I know that you love music as much as you love writing. Have you had to put your music aside as you've been pursuing your poetry mantle for the city?
[Sundaram]: I do music every night. My husband and I play guitar, and we sing some jazz standards, and we play a few Charlie Parker tunes, and we, you know, and then we do a little Lester Young here and there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, wow.
[Sundaram]: We don't with a guitar. We play their solos, and we have fun. We're just sort of keeping our hand in. So I'm not doing anything new musically, but I'm trying to not lose track of it. Really, the next stage would be to set my poems to music. But I'm so busy working at college that I don't know when I can do it.
[Cotter]: But that's the goal. That's where I'm headed. Well, it's a blast. I can tell you that from experience. I don't know if you had known about the work that I had done with Jonathan Fagan and the Ally Project. But going into the studio with good musicians and doing poetry while they play, and in your case, perhaps playing with them musically as well, it's a blast. It really is. It's so, you know, I hope you get to do that.
[Sundaram]: Yeah, my friend Glenn Dixon and I are planning to do something together. We just haven't had a chance to get back. We performed here before. That's right. I really enjoyed playing with him.
[Cotter]: Yeah, yeah. He's, Glenn is, whoo. Absolutely lovely. He's in the ethereum, you know. Very good, very good. Okay. Has being the Poet Laureate at all informed the way you approach your teaching?
[Sundaram]: No, not really. Not at all. Because I was a teacher for longer than I've been a poet laureate and one of my students who attended my Porter Square reading books, I had a reading at Porter Square books this summer and she's a homeschool student of mine and she said the way you read and you shared your poetry reminds me of how you taught, which was the highest compliment that anyone could have given me. I thought, thank you, that's what I needed. I mean, if it sounds real, and it's not like, oh, I'm making this up for this audience or that audience, it's all part of the same cut of cloth, then I will have achieved my goal. So I feel nothing has changed in that sense. Plus, I'm older. If I had been in my 30s and had this, it might have changed me. But I'm 60 years old this year, nothing can faze me.
[Cotter]: Sorry. I'm just there, I'm sorry, I'm just doing, thank you. And in the hood, we say black don't crack, right? And you with this beautiful collection of yours, you can come hang out with us anytime.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks.
[Cotter]: OK, so advice. What advice, having been the poet laureate, it's a beautiful thing, would you give to an aspiring poet who perhaps wants to publish and gain some more public recognition?
[Sundaram]: So publishing is hard. By the time they appointed me as Poet Laureate, my book hadn't yet come out. It came out a month after that. It took me forever to get this. I mean, the person publishing it is lovely, but she was backlogged because of COVID. So it took her four years to get to my book, which she had promised me, or three years, something like that. I'm not exactly clear. I think I spoke to her in 2020 or 2021. And finally it came out. Okay, not four or three, maybe two and a half.
[SPEAKER_07]: I don't know.
[Sundaram]: It took a long time. And now when I asked her again, she said she's backlogged again. So I can't get published by her again. So I'm going to look for another publisher. And there's no money in this thing. No, no money in this thing. And nobody and the small presses are all pressed for time, so to speak. And so and people are beating down the doors trying to get published. And sometimes there's a glut of poetry and sometimes you say, OK, fine. There's a part of me that says, forget about it. Just go and keep writing. If people want you, they'll come to you. And I think you gain a certain perspective when you get older. And there's no hurry. There's nothing to prove to anybody.
[Cotter]: It isn't. You're absolutely right. Well, listen, I have six no monies going on seven. And I think and they call it vanity press for a reason, but I think that there's something in us that wants to see it on paper, wants to see it in print, and if people want to buy it, that's a beautiful thing, but we give ourselves a pass on that because we want to see it get done. So beautifully put. It's so true.
[Sundaram]: You cast your bread upon the waters, as they say, and it comes back to you as something else.
[Cotter]: That's right. Hopefully as a muffin, you know. Definitely not burned toast. So when I did my two years for the city, I had a lot of folks help me do some things that I was able to do during my appointment. Do you have any particular folks, and I know that this is a dangerous thing to do, but do you have any particular folks that you want to give thanks or a public shout out to?
[Sundaram]: Yes, definitely. Well, the mayor's office has been really kind to me. Anytime I ask for something, they really help me out. Oh, beautiful. So Steve Smurty and all the other folk over there, the good folk. I don't want to keep naming all the names because I might pronounce them incorrectly. Koliani.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, Lisa. Lisa Koliani. Yeah.
[Sundaram]: And then also the ACM folks, so Gary Roberts and Regina Parkinson, they're wonderful. And the Medford Library, all of them actually.
[SPEAKER_07]: Barbara Kerr and Sam Sednick.
[Sundaram]: Yeah, Sam Sednick is awesome, and Barbara Kerr. So I want to thank all of them. And of course, I want to thank you. Well, thank you. You've always been helpful in promoting us all. And you included us in this sort of generous gesture when we first began. And you had that farmers market online thing that we did in 2021. It was a wonderful thing. And then also in person. Thank you so much.
[Cotter]: Well, I knew that it was fully going to be your intention to kind of look at what I'd done and say, OK, well, what's the next move? What's the next level? And so I've been appreciative of everything that you've done that kind of reflects on the fact that you kind of look at the plan and said, OK, that was good. That was good. That was good. Let's do this. So thank you very much. Once you get finished with grading papers and kicking them out, what new initiatives are you excited about over the next several months of your tenure?
[Sundaram]: Yikes. Well, I'm just going to plug away at the two things that I'm doing. I'm hoping, I don't know if there's any, I'm just hoping to do something for poetry that I'm yet to unveil until I speak with the proper people. I'm planning to do something big for poetry. I hope it comes out.
[Cotter]: All right, well stay tuned everybody because Vijay is planning to do something big for poetry. Maybe like April-ish for National Poetry Month?
[Sundaram]: Yeah, probably April-ish or maybe May because April is such a horrible month and so cruel and cold and windy and awful. But anyway, maybe April. You know, what is it, T.S. Eliot, April is the cruelest month.
[Cotter]: Cruelest month, yes. Okay, so as you think about collaborations, and particularly youth poetry, in engaging more folks in the appreciation of the literary arts in Medford, what do you see as some potential challenges and some potential opportunities?
[Sundaram]: So I am worried about, dare I say this, the political climate. So I'm not going to go there because everybody's listening in. You'd rather make friends. I just hope that people support the arts. The arts, a country without the arts is a dead country. The arts are We are the canaries in the coal mine, in a sense, but we are also the celebrators, we are the larks in the spring and so on and so forth, if we want to get the bird metaphor out. But I hope that they keep supporting poetry and music and art. The Arts Collaborative Medford, the space is gorgeous. They have so many paintings and sculptures and just lovely to go there and to do poetry over there. So I hope our city continues to support us and I hope Massachusetts is good. It's a really good place for the arts, I think. But I hope that the country gets behind it. And I hope we poets speak up when we hear and see injustice.
[Cotter]: That's right.
[Sundaram]: We need to speak up. We can't cower behind, I don't know, some comfortable life that we have, saying, well, it doesn't affect me, so why should I care? But it does affect, what is it, what you do unto the smallest among them, you do unto me.
[Cotter]: Absolutely.
[Sundaram]: Or the least of my brothers.
[Cotter]: Martin Luther King said, he said, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Everywhere, absolutely. OK, so before we move to sharing some verse with the audience, you and I, I want to let you button up kind of this conversation part. What other thoughts do you have that you might like to share? Anything in particular?
[Sundaram]: I think everyone should explore their poetic and artistic selves. You can't tie yourself to some image of who you are or were and say that is not me. If you look at something and say I wish I could do that, then try it. You wish you wanted to paint, go paint. If you wish you wanted to learn a guitar, Don't compare yourself to, I don't know, Les Paul or whoever, or Django Reinhardt. Just play guitar. You don't have to be someone else. You just have to do it.
[Cotter]: That's right. That's beautiful. Absolutely. So we're going to take turns. We're going to read a little bit of poetry. Is that all right with everybody? OK, very good. So as my guest, obviously, I am going to give the floor to Vijaya first. And Vijaya, you read whatever your little heart, big heart actually, wants to do.
[Sundaram]: All right, thank you.
[Cotter]: Yes, of course.
[Sundaram]: So let me start with something joyful. I wrote this on the 4th of December, which was two days ago. And I don't usually write panegyrics or whatever about athletes. It's not my thing. I'm not Pindar. Someone said, are you being Pindar? I said, no. But I saw a beautiful video of Olga Korbut. Oh my goodness. And I remember her from when I was a kid and I saw that leap, those leaps that she did and I saw it, it crossed my Facebook feed and I thought, wow, this is so beautiful. And for the first time I wrote about a person who is completely unconnected with my life. Okay. In that, in a sporty sense, athletic sense. So it's called Olga Korbut, not very imaginative title. That smile at the end, pure glee, a thumbing of the nose at gravity, at foolish notions of human limitations. A thumbing of the nose at serious folk jabbering away because that's all they could do then and that's all they can do now. Master of air, of creating air mazes in the space she occupied, creating current that buoyed her up. She swung, and flipped, and balanced, and spun, and flipped backwards, and bounced off the horizontal bars. She was rubber, and it was nothing. She spun herself a vortex, swirling with energy, and crackling with electric power, within whose core sat sure force of Olga Will, silent, eyes closed, breathing in and out. Sitting, not swirling and twirling and whirling and hurling herself against a too solid wall of air, daring it to hurt her. Then smiling, disarming everything with the sweetest, purest, childlike joy.
[Cotter]: Beautiful. We do like this.
[Sundaram]: And when I looked her up, I was heartbroken to find out that she had the usual horrible story of Me Too with her coach. And I thought, well, that smile she gave, that was her flipping him off. That was like, I will be great despite you.
[Cotter]: That's beautiful. Thank you. Where am I? So here is, this is for us. OK? So this piece is called Kill the Poets First. All right? Don't take it literally. All right? So anybody back there that got any, you know, just keep it to yourself. But anyways, kill the poets first, for they will tell the truth and shame the devil in all of us. They will highlight the lack of honor among thieves with assonance, alliteration, and clever metaphor. Put them in shackles and parade them through the public square. Strip them naked if you dare. They will expose the libertarian as the libertine amid the piles of gluttony, hubris, pride, and prejudice that lie at his outridden feet. They will rightly divide the gospel in ways that the jackleg and the profligate and the snake oil purveyor conflate, confuse, and contradict at every pulpit and podium. They will measure with meter the length of the bigot's bloodline, the strength of the captor's confine, the mark of the beastly revenant, the lies which prove most fraudulent the truth that they seek to circumvent. Kill the poets first, for their lyrics, like fine opera, will peel away the lie and pare down the malice and point out the mayhem in rhyming couplets, piquant haiku, and epic odes, hip hop for the homeboys. with their Black Lives Matter and their Save the Planet and their No Justice, No Peace. They will roll the bedrocks of the right wing of the rabid racists and the reluctant witness back down the mountain we've scaled like a Sisyphus stone over and over and over again. Kill the poets first, by the bullet in the ballot, by the garret and the glock and the guillotine in the gas chamber, by a thousand disappearing acts and a hundred hidden dungeons, by the noose from the bow of an ancient oak. Now that is the ultimate attention getter, a foolproof message sender, greater in gore than any artist can render, crucifixion for the commoner and the crusader. Oh, no allegiance to the song. Vow not to the charming verses. Smile not at the fragrant lyric. Hide not the pretty sonnet in the bowels of your heart of darkness. Kill them first. They will trick you. You will feel the pangs of your lost humanity welling up in your bosom. They will convict you, make you want to buy back your soul from some long departed demons who made you crave sin. They will be the straw that breaks your camel's loyal back and causes your beast of burden to spurn the desert of your depravity. Don't let them hold a mirror to your faces. Don't let their light shine on shameful places. Don't let them put our hounds through their paces. Don't let their judges handle our cases. Kill the poets. Kill the poets. Kill the poets first. Oh good. I love that poem.
[Sundaram]: I just love it. I was so pleased that you were reading it.
[Cotter]: Very good. Please. Sally Forth.
[Sundaram]: Okay, Sally Forth, indeed. I wonder what Sally has to say about that.
[Cotter]: Sorry. Sorry. Why do they keep calling me?
[Sundaram]: Shirley. Don't call me Shirley. Okay. Okay. I love English. Even though it's a colonial language that took over my country and deprived me of my own
[Cotter]: Well, there it is. There it is.
[Sundaram]: What did Walt Whitman say? Do I contradict myself? Very well then. I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes. All right. Let me see. OK. Shall I speak about a thing or shall I do a personal thing? Whatever you like. All right. All right, everybody, well, most people must have heard about Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem Kubla Khan. At some point in your life, in school, the teachers must have inflicted that poem on you. Well, I hope they didn't inflict it. I hope you loved it, because I did. And one of the things about Coleridge is that, if you might recall, he was an opium addict. And the story goes that he was under the influence when he wrote that poem, which I can fully believe because the poem is so amazing. But he says that the first half of the poem was different from the others. I don't know if he said that, but it is said that the first half is different from the other half because he was interrupted by a man from Porlock who came to the door. So I make a reference to that, otherwise this poem is nothing like his, except it's called Xanadu. Daffodils light up the sidewalk, and tulips, crimson and purple, struggle into awareness. Trees exhale a sigh, glad at the chance of a rebirth. Every day is a why, followed by its wry sibling, why not? And I sigh over their squabble. I have no truck with things that trick the mind, but sometimes I wonder, If someone came to my door, like the person from Porlock, would I forget my story and my song, even with clear-eyed, unclouded mind? Would I welcome that which would interrupt what I had barely begun? Would I, with songs and words, build that octagon with towers, people it with spirits, hedge it about with impassable things, and sit within, guitar in hand, singing of things never heard, of places never seen, of people never loved? Would my floating hair and flashing eyes keep you and you and you at bay? Would I look in a mirror and see everything, all of you, laterally inverted, flat, unknowable, and I know with a hard metronomic pulse of knowledge that I could never know what was real and what was its reflection?
[Cotter]: Wow, wow. Metronomic knowledge. Thank you. Okay. All right. Oh, no, no, no. We don't want to go there. That'll get me in trouble.
[SPEAKER_06]: What?
[Cotter]: Yeah. See? It's like, oh, OK. All right. We'll kill you.
[SPEAKER_07]: Quick love.
[SPEAKER_06]: We won't let them kill you.
[Cotter]: Please don't. It's the only life I have. No, no, that's far too long. I'm going to read a poem called The Ally. I have done a CD with some musicians, Jonathan Fagan, Greg Toro, and John Dalton. And we call ourselves The Ally Project. And this is one of the pieces that we put to music. And I say that we met at the, intersection of jazz and social justice. And so that's what this is kind of about, the ally. Friends become distant and strange, as if you have some creeping mange. Family wonders why and wrings their hands. How could you choose them over us? We're your blood, bone of your bone, and flesh of your flesh. They're not like us. They're so different, less than, not equal to, beneath. Declarations have been made. Arrangements are in place. These are matters of our clan. Signs have been painted. You're going to be cast out. You're going to be shunned. You need to stick with your own kind. An ally? Is that what they're calling you? Well, it's a hard road to hoe. You're making strange bedfellows. You're casting your white pearls before swine. You weren't raised to behave like this. Our family is a proud and honored clan. We'll never be lower than any black man. There's no room for them at this table. There's always been two sides of the track, a right and a wrong side of town, our kind and their kind, your people and those folk. It's going to kill your mother and your daddy's turning over in his grave. You want to shout out Black Lives Matter, but the master plan is to make them scatter, to serve them pain on a silver platter. Our people own them. For 200 years they worked this land. They were our property, our Negroes, hell, our niggas to make it plain. You can't be out there with them. You can't be shoulder to shoulder with the ones we need to dominate, relegate, subjugate, eliminate. They want reparations. Well, we're making preparations to give them 40 acres of hell and a mule kick to the gut. You don't seem to get it, son. This is the way the races run. There's not enough room for everyone. The time for black and brown is done. Show your pride and pick up your gun. the side that has always won. You can't be out there with them. You can't be shoulder to shoulder with the ones we need to dominate, relegate, subjugate, eliminate. My mother used to say, life is hard, but fair. You had a good home, but you didn't stay there. So yeah.
[Sundaram]: That was a deeply powerful and very moving poem.
[Cotter]: Thank you. Thank you. One more for you, one more for me. How about that? OK.
[Sundaram]: So let's see. And well, I'm sort of torn between reading something about something and something from this book. Your choice. I like them all. You need to read them both.
[Cotter]: You read them both. Not a problem.
[Sundaram]: All right. Well, this one is called Drapo Aiti. I wrote it for flag day, Asian flag day. Georgiana Chevry asked me to write for that event and I was really honored to do so which meant I had to do a lot of research because I don't like to go in and it's very easy to spin words if you're good at writing but it's you have to be careful and you have to think about what you want to say and whether it's relevant And so I did some research, and I knew a little bit, but I didn't know as much as when I dived into it. So how do you write a poem about a flag? You know, so I sort of wove some history into it. So Drapo Aiti. O Aiti, beloved land of Taino and African, Land of hills so green and tall, of you I sing a song for all. O Haiti, O Haiti, O land of pain and sorrow, and joy and power and rage and blood and hopes for new tomorrows. I salute and celebrate your flag that emerged in triumph after war, the upward march to claim your fate, sing Le Union fait la force. I see you and salute you for the land you wish to be, embrace you and I honor you and pray for harmony. O Haiti, O Haiti, O land of mountains tall, land of struggle, land of beauty, I sing your rise and fall. I see you and salute you, and I sing the song of you, of those who fought to take back that which belongs to you. In fateful 1791, O Aiti, you raised your head, and in the year 1804 you claimed your land and led. I see you, I salute you, and I sing about your own, of Toussaint, the all-saintly who led the way alone. I see you and I sing about the man who led the way, l'ouverture, the opening, brought in the light of day. And Toussaint was betrayed by one who did not keep his word. He died in France and never saw the dream which had occurred. Your own flag flew, the white torn out, the red remained with blue, with the palm above the mountain in the year your story grew. You hold your head up, buoyed by the hopes of one another, to live, to work, to eat, to dream a land where none are other. O Haiti, O Haiti, O land of pain and sorrow, and joy and power and pride and blood and hopes for new tomorrows. May you fly both high and free above the land that you adore leave hurt behind and work for peace United evermore. Oh, I eat the Oh Haiti Oh land of pain and sorrow and joy and power and pride and blood and hopes for new tomorrows on this your day to you I say may you not be denied your sovereignty your right to be may peace be at your side.
[Cotter]: Oh, wow. That's beautiful. Oh That is so beautiful. Yeah. So, yes, absolutely.
[Sundaram]: I forgot to mention that Salim, who was the next leader, but I just wanted to talk about the beginning of it. And he came and he did much more.
[Cotter]: So it's... Bespoke poetry, I think we kind of describe it as, it's like going to London and getting a suit of clothes from a fine clothier. It's bespoke, it's made to your specific measurements and so forth. And it does indeed take some research, some getting down in the weeds to find out what the real story is, because you want to tell the real story. And that was beautiful, that was real. Thank you. So yeah. All right. And I think you touched on it a little bit earlier when you said that with the political climate, maybe the arts could potentially be in a little bit of jeopardy. And we live in hope and expectation that that won't be the case. But I think beyond the arts, one of the other things that we have to be real mindful of you know, and particularly in fairness to the communities that we live in, is the whole situation with immigration. And so I want to read a piece that I wrote about, you know, kind of not being the America that some of us would love to see us all be able to live in together. So this piece is called Alienation. Here is a fence without a gate. You can't get in. You have to wait. You can't be foreign or somehow strange. This isn't your home, home on the range. You can't arrive in a rickety boat. Our castle has a treacherous moat. We won't host refugees at our door. You're not the sort we're looking for. Take good note. We stay on guard. We don't want you in our backyard. Despite the danger you seek to avoid, our best deterrents have been deployed. You say your country's full of peril. But like stray cats, we think you're feral. We think you're prone to filth and crime. We don't want either at this time. We don't care what the nations say. They won't do more than hope and pray. Our stance is clear on human rights. Lock the door. Turn off the lights. You saw that statue in the bay. It stood for liberty until today. It welcomed tired and huddled masses, not criminals from your underclasses. We've got militias on the border. They own big guns to keep the order. Law enforcement lets them stay to help them keep your kind at bay. Why do we feel that this is good? Why can't we share the neighborhood? Is it because you're black and brown? No, we just choose to stand our ground. Stay in your place, deal with your issues, we'll send lots of coal and tissues. Don't form caravans and run, you'll find yourselves in the sight of a gun. There are no streets here lined with gold, our eyes are closed, our hearts are cold. There is no flowing milk and honey, American skies are not that sunny. The fences we build keep aliens out. They serve to keep our faith devout. This land we scheme to make our own, it's ours, you see, and ours alone. As long as you stay on the other side, we can maintain our national pride. Please don't show your anguished faces. We're cutting back on other races. We've had enough of global inclusion. We're winning this country of race confusion. We know how to win these fights and limit all these civil rights. Safety nets in the welfare state will have to stop for the lost and the laid, a rising tide that favors the rich. That's our favorite campaign pitch. Me Too movements and Black Lives Matter, in all due time, your ranks will scatter. You think that you shall overcome, just cross this line, we'll give you some. We'll give you a taste of burning churches and blackboards hung from oaks and birches. We'll give you a taste of incarceration in prisons.com, the corporate plantation. We're taking this country back to the time when a brown life wasn't worth a dime, except for the way it worked in the field, except for a bushel of crops to yield. We're taking this country back to the day when white meant right in every way, when men of privilege could rape and beat and kill for spite, then lie and cheat. We're taking this homeland back to a season when hooded marauders needed no reason to hunt folks down with rifles and dogs through the lonely woods, the swamps, and bogs, when Confederate flags were boldly raised and crosses in the darkness blazed, and the land was full of racial hate served with grits on a breakfast plate. You thought that this worm had surely turned, and young black bodies no longer burned. Yet here you are again today with the specter of prejudice winning the day. The MAGA caps we wear with pride. Sure, let us know who's on our side. The pointed hood and long white robe, fine clothes for the xenophobe. Perhaps this place that immigrants covet can somehow heal and rise above it. Until that day, our best advice to call this home, you'll pay a price. You'll pay a price as many misguided embrace the hate their voice provided, his Twitter rants and sound bites full of ethnocentric cock and bull. You'll pay a price as higher walls lead great climbers to greater falls where fences are the new condition announcing the refugees abolition. This isn't our nation's greatest hour, this flexing of white supremacist power. And yet, the season is fully revealing the stain of hatred we've been concealing. So take good note and be on guard of deadly traps around the yard. Our agents are on high alert to keep you foreigners off this dirt. Tolerance is in short supply. We won't let your kind occupy the sacred land our forebears built. We don't subscribe to Anglo guilt. This fence was built without a gate to keep out all who come here late. To all you aliens who don't like strange, no room at the inn in our home on the range. All right. So if you'd like, thank you, thank you. If you'd like, you get the last word. Yes. So read us to it out. All right, please.
[Sundaram]: Okay, so this is a poem that I imagined, I wrote where I imagined a detained child's memory of another life. And when I read this at my college poetry reading, one of my students told me later that she had been a detained child, that she was Brazilian, and she had been in one of those cages. And she said, you know, they would let us lie in our own filth. And like, if a girl got a period, she could not pads, I mean. They would eat half-frozen burritos while the guards walked around with steaming hot, lovely food. She saw all that, and she said, actually, your poem made sense to me. Because we try to remember better times. But I had written this poem long before I knew any of them. A dream of forgetting. Somewhere trees stand tall, like my papa, who stands both legs apart, arms akimbo, staring into the distance, hearing the sound of hogs before the peace of the afternoon shatters into a thousand shards and slices into our family. Somewhere, water flows like my mama's hair, rippling in the breeze after she's washed it, and she's hanging up a few clothes to dry in burning sun. But water is scarce, and we are scared, and we turn to face a land that has plenty, so much more than we can dream of. We are here now in this land of plenty, but there's none for me. I dream and dream to forget the hunger in my belly, the smell of unwashed bodies and the pain slicing me like a rough-edged knife when I think of both my parents, gone like the memory of a photograph in a dream. I sit on a concrete floor with little ones, hollow-eyed, hollow-cheeked, hollow-bellied, with no sound coming from open mouths, eyes dry, all tears gone. Somewhere there are flowers, pink and blue and purple, scenting the air, gladdening bees and tempting butterflies, which dance, lust-crazed and dizzy, above them. Somewhere, water flows like freedom, and I dance barefoot on grass, full of sweetness and the soft murmurings of gentle insects, so full of life and quiet rhythms. I dream. Somewhere, my father still stands, tall as the trees, unbending, on another land that is green. He whistles, and the hogs and goats around him lie content. Somewhere, my mother hangs up clothes to dry, her hair rippling like waves. I eat rich soft tortillas and drink cool water, my belly full of gratitude.
[Cotter]: Beautiful. So I told you, yes, that we are kindred spirits. And I think if you've listened to the poetry that we've shared, you can kind of see what I'm saying. We think about a lot of the same things as we write poetry. We have a lot of the same feelings and inspirations. And so it's always a pleasure to get together with you, Vijaya, because I know that you're going to speak to my spirit. And you definitely have this evening. And it's always a pleasure to speak with you.
[Sundaram]: Always a pleasure to speak with you, Terry. It's lovely, and lovely to hear your poetry, too. Thank you.
[Cotter]: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Very good. Very good. So thank you so much for bringing your wonderful perspective and your great talent to the arts community in greater Medford. It's important work that you've been engaged in, and I hope that the city continues to respond with love and respect as you move into the last phase of your tenure. And to everyone watching, thank you so much for your attentiveness and interest in our discussion and the poetry that we've read. Get ready for something very special on the musical side of the coin. We're going to take a break to reset our stage and give the musicians some headroom. And then I'll come back. I'll share some announcements. And we'll get right into the music portion of the program. So thank you very much.
[Sundaram]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_04]: Wow, you guys are powerful.
[Cotter]: Well, people who are gifted with words, I'll tell you.
[SPEAKER_03]: You're good, especially if you're going to get like a coil around the lawn. Yeah, let's see.
[Cotter]: Oh, another thing you can do is you can put it first and then use it to push the overdrive more.
[SPEAKER_08]: Check, check.
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's hard. So it's easier.
[Cotter]: OK.
[SPEAKER_03]: All right, let's see.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'll get my other glasses.
[SPEAKER_06]: Can you do it for me? You're playing a different record.
[SPEAKER_07]: Let's try this.
[SPEAKER_08]: You ready?
[Cotter]: Okay, while the band is tuning up a little bit, just want to give you a few announcements. First of all, thanks to everyone who joined us for our November program. It was great to catch up with our executive director, Lisa Crossman. And for those of you who are in the room, to hear Donna McElroy, she was spectacular. If you missed it, Check out MCM's online archive or your YouTube channel. You'll be glad you did. For those seniors that are out there, join us every week, Tuesday through Thursday, for a nutritious lunch and a vibrant fellowship. Lunch is served at 12 noon. You can call 781-483-3042 to make a reservation. And stay tuned for more information about the WMCC's annual MLK Day celebration, which will happen on January 20th of next year, which is almost this year, at the St. Raphael's Paris Center. Our event last year was tremendous, so we have some big shoes to fill. It will be a free event with a $10 donation graciously suggested. Registration will be required, and we do expect to have a packed house. So when registration opens up, you want to make sure that you get your registration in. How you can help us here at the community center, your tax-deductible donations, if you missed Tuesday, are still very much desirable. Help to support the mission of the WMCC. Partner with us in carrying our mission forward. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation to this vital community organization. before December 31st. You can make your donation by phone, online, or by check. Please contact Lisa Crossman at 781-483-3042 for more information or to become a member. Okay, so now it's time to turn our attention to the lyrical miracle we've engaged for this evening's musical side of the ledger. Kadan's jazz performs blends of cherished musical styles and rhythms that are not commonly heard in this region. Their repertoire is a confluence of musical styles and rhythms from Africa, the French Caribbean, Brazil, and American jazz, with emphasis on the lively rhythms of Compa and Zouk from Haiti, and Martinique and Guadalupe. They hope to inspire listeners toward a broader appreciation of diverse music and cultural horizons, The five-piece band includes a guitar, piano, drums, bass, sax, flute, and percussions, all representing decades of experience by local professional musicians. The group is organized by Mark Torgerson. Thank you. That's Mark right there.
[SPEAKER_04]: And my wonderful compatriots.
[Cotter]: Absolutely. The band includes Mark's on guitar, Hillary Noble on percussion, and Wins, okay. Flute, sax, okay. Cornell Coley on drum and percussions. Michael Shea on the keys. There it is, there it is. All right. And Galen Willett back there on the sexy, the big sexy, the bass. That's what I needed. All right. Ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm West Medford welcome to Kadan's Jazz. All righty.
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you. Thank you. OK. We're going to start with a song that we usually start with, which this one is It was the first one I heard sort of along these lines of this music, which has got this compa feel to it. It's just an instrumental. It's called Roman Zouk. I experienced a broken string. Sorry, folks. I'm going to have to make a little adjustment here.
[SPEAKER_06]: What did you say? Say again? Zouk. Yes. Always more zouk with this group. This guy's fault. You can't get enough zouk, this guy.
[SPEAKER_04]: All right. Try to get this guitar in tune. I prefer the other one, but you won't have time to.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, go ahead. Hey, Mark, are we doing Big Brother or Z?
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, I was going to do Take the Z. Gotcha, gotcha. We're going to do a, when I get tuned up here, we're going to do, we're going to do our version of Duke Ellington's Take the A Train, but we call it Take the Z Train. So it's got a little bit different rhythm to it. It's unusual for the string that broke is one of the slightly heavier strings. They usually don't break, but there it is. You never know when they're going to do it. Yeah, I don't know my own strength. It's been on there too long. All right.
[SPEAKER_03]: All right.
[SPEAKER_04]: Bear with us, bear with us. Thank you, thank you Cornell for throwing that in. Thank you, thank you. Thank you. A little different than your usual take the A train.
[SPEAKER_07]: Thanks for watching!
[SPEAKER_04]: That was our version of Got to Get You Into My Life.
[SPEAKER_06]: All right. We should have quizzed him and said, did you notice what it was?
[SPEAKER_04]: Would you have known? I knew. All right, see? Can't control.
[SPEAKER_06]: Our version of the Requiem of the Empire's version of The Beatles.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it's got it. Besides our own touches, it's got a bit of both versions. Are we ready?
[SPEAKER_03]: Want to try this?
[SPEAKER_04]: And Cornell, explain that one. Cornell is our expert on everything Brazilian.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we'll see.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's a secret sauce. It's a hexagon, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: This is, it's got a flavor of baião in it.
[SPEAKER_06]: Square.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, you're right. You can dance to it too, you know. It's like for the cowboys.
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you, thank you, thank you. That was a premier performance of that. First time. Anyway, okay, so. Yes, yes, yes, that was written by our fine piano player here, Michael Shea.
[SPEAKER_06]: That's not what you meant, but okay.
[SPEAKER_04]: Gola, I guess, yeah. a song which is an instrumental version of a vocal song. It's by a Haitian artist who I'm really fond of. His name is Beethoven Oba. So it's like the first name Beethoven, O-B-A-S. So it's going to have... Beethoven of Port-au-Prince. Of Port-au-Prince. And so we do an instrumental version of this very pretty song.
[SPEAKER_07]: So,
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
[Cotter]: Fantastic. Certainly more music than we can fit into our broadcast window. So what we're going to do is we're going to put a rap on the official and we'll see what happens with the unofficial. But before we do that, Mark Torgerson on guitar. Hillary Noble here on percussion in the winds. Galen Willett on bass back there, Michael Shea on the keys, and Cornell Coley back there on the drums, another percussion. Ladies and gentlemen, that's Kadanz Jazz. Okay, and that is a wrap for this live edition of the West Medford Community Center's monthly words and music program. We're so happy to have you back here at the center and visiting with you in your living rooms and other household places. I want to thank all of our guests for allowing us to invade their spaces, showing their faces and sharing their graces. Special thanks to Vijaya Sundaram for sharing her wonderful presence and poetry here with us. And thanks again to Mark and Kadanz Jazz for their spicy serving of world music to the West Medford area. Air high five to Kevin Harrington from Medford Community Media and Mark Davidson volunteering for Medford Community Media helping us on the be live on the cable side, and thank you all for spending another evening enjoying what the WMCC has to offer. We'll take a break in January as we prepare for our annual MLK Day celebration, but we'll be back in February most definitely for another edition of Fresh Fridays, Words and Music. If you're gonna hang out, maybe the band will jam a little bit more, but if not, be safe and enjoy the rest of your weekend. All right.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for Don's jazz.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's an honor to be part of it. Thank you.
[SPEAKER_04]: Couldn't have said it better myself. I've been a fan of Terry's for a number of years now.